Awen is Welsh for inspiration, the muse. This blog will record my explorations into poetry and fiction writing and my interests in Welsh/Celtic poetics and mythology.

Monday, 27 October 2014

Why Welsh?

In my previous
post I mentioned my interests in Celtic mythology and Welsh language and
history. These came about for a variety of reasons, some to do with the fact I
have Welsh ancestry on my father’s side. My paternal grandmother was born in Cardiff
County, Wales, and came to Australia in the 1910s. I remember when I was told
this as a child I felt some sort of kinship to the country. My father then said
that if I couldn’t roll my r’s like the Welsh do, then I probably had missed
out on the gene. I couldn’t, and so for a long time I chose to forget this
aspect of my ancestry.

My father was
born in Australia, yet people who met him often commented he seemed more
English than Australian. This was likely due to the influence of his immigrant
parents, his father having been born in Bishop’s Stortford, Essex, England, and
who had also come out to Australia in the 1910s. Given my mother was born in
Antwerp, Belgium, my heritage wasn’t so definite. And possibly because of this mix
and the natural tendency to uphold one’s birthplace above others, for years I
considered myself Australian before anything else.

That all
changed after my reading of both Tolkien’s The
Lord of the Rings and Robert Graves’s The
White Goddess and I fell in love with Celtic mythology. The stories and
poems comprising the Matter of Britain—Arthur, Taliesin and Merlin, bards and
druids—sang to me in a way that others hadn’t. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t
roll my r’s. I had Welsh blood in me (and Scottish, when I went farther back in
my ancestry); and I could even rationalise my Belgian heritage by pointing out
the country was named after a Celtic tribe, the Belgae, some of whom had also settled in Britain.

Since the mid-2000s
I have thrown myself even deeper into my love of all things Celtic. I have
travelled three times to countries of the Celtic Fringe and have read and
researched materials for a Dark Ages novel. I have started learning Welsh
through a group operating in The Celtic Club in Melbourne. It is a hard
language to learn, especially some of the pronunciations, and my progress is
slow, though I am determined to become fluent eventually. My r’s are coming
along nicely.

Do I still
consider myself Australian rather than English or Welsh or Celtic? That’s a
hard question, as it really doesn’t have only one answer. I am Australian by
birth and by language usage. I barrack for Australian teams. I hold to
Australian egalitarian values. However, even though I have travelled in and
through Australian landscapes and appreciated their beauty, I feel more
comfortable in Celtic landscapes, the mist, the mountains, the bright and dark green
foliage. I prefer autumn, winter and spring to summer.

Since my
visits to the countries of the Celtic Fringe, to Wales and Scotland in
particular, I now know that deep sense of longing for home the Welsh call
‘Hireath’ (pronounced ‘Here-eyeth’, with a stronger ‘r’). I can’t wait to get
back there, for immersion and re-connection. In the meantime, I can at least
inhabit it in my imagination, through language learning and through book
research and my writing. More about these activities in future posts.

Marilyn and I got here in September. She loves the MA in Psych here - lots of European philosophy and humanistic psych, inc poems like 'Prufrock'. But she has CFS - dreadfully disabling, so the Fall quarter's 18 assignments in 10 weeks have knocked her up, it's week 11 and much still to do. In Jan I will Do poetry with David Wagoner (88!). Send me poems, I'll send you mine...best from Max

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About Me

Born and bred in Melbourne, Australia, I came to writing and poetry late, after careers and ambitions in mathematics, martial arts and music. I have had poetry and fiction published in journals and anthologies around Australia and also in Britain, Canada, the USA, and Germany. In 2005 I won the Melbourne Poets Union International Poetry Competition and I have been shortlisted in others, including the Blake Poetry Prize. I taught in a writing course at Box Hill Institute, Victoria, for 17 years and have completed a PhD in Creative Writing. Currently, I am working on my second collection of poetry and a Dark Ages novel. I live in Melbourne with my wife, Jo, and the seasonal owls, bats and lorikeets that love the trees around our home.